Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

QUEEN CAROLINE AND THE PRINT CULTURE OF REGENCY RADICALISM
seventeenth-century emblem books. [19] Th e vigilance of the free press (the
radical press) equally protects the Queen and the people:
Scorn’d, exiled, baffl ed, goaded in distress,
She owes her safety to a fearless Press:
With all the freedom that it makes its own,
It guards, alike, the people and their throne; (181)
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Th e celebration of the press was the theme that linked Hone’s satiric
pamphlets. From the Political House to A Slap at Slop (Hone, 1822), his last
satiric pamphlet, Hone celebrated the press as a force against tyranny and
corruption. Played against an environment of restrictive press legislation,
Hone’s use of the popularity of his satires to publicise the democratic role of
the press displays the sense of mission of Regency radicals and constitutes a
determined contribution to the establishment of a freer press and society.
Th e ‘trial’ of the Queen provided a climatic moment of the satiric representation
of the Aff air. Hone exploited the satiric potential of trial parody [20]
in Non Mi Ricordo. Hone had already made use of trial parody in 1817,
with the satire on Lord Castlereagh Another Ministerial Defeat! Th e Trial of
the Dog for Biting the Noble Lord (Hone, 1817). In this satire, Lord Castlreagh’s
dog, appropriately nicknamed ‘Honesty’, was tried for having bitten
his lordship. [21]
Non Mi Ricordo! was published in September 1820 during the proceedings
against the Queen in the House of Lords, and went through at least
thirty-one editions in 1820. Kent and Ewen (2002: 22) claim that the idea
for Non Mi Riccordo came from conversations between Hone and Cruikshank,
and probably Hazlitt, at the Southampton Coff ee House in Chancery
Lane.
In Non Mi Ricordo, George IV is ridiculed in an imagined cross-examination
at the Queen’s trial. Hone exploits the stylistic confrontation between
Majocchi, (the Italian witness discredited by Henry Brougham, one of the
Queen’s attorneys) and George IV in a discursive ‘decomposition’ (Marsh,
19 Cruikshank’s design alludes directly to the print Th e Double Deliverance, of 1621 by the Ipswich
preacher Samuel Ward (Dunan-Page and Lynch, 2008).
20 Other trial parodies include Th omas Wooler’s ‘Trial Extraordinary’ and ‘Th e State Trials Contrasted
with the Manchester no Trials’. During the proceedings against the Queen several other
trial parodies of imagined cross-examinations of the King appeared, namely Examination
Extraordinaire of the Vice R–y of B–d–yboro! Alias Th e Handsome Gentleman (Anon., 1820).
21 Animal trials were very popular trial parodies in the early nineteenth-century. For some examples
of animal trials, see Wood (1994: 145-7).
Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb 173 05-01-2012 09:38:28